“Laziest actor you’ve ever met,” Bettany deadpanned. Close by have been manuscripts of 9 symphonies that Mozart wrote inside two years, in his late teenagers. Bettany snapped photographs. “My son’s a composer”—Stellan Connelly Bettany, his older baby with the actress Jennifer Connelly, is on the Royal Faculty of Music—“and he’s solely written one symphony this yr!”
“Your mom left considered one of you the storage unit. And, the opposite one, the important thing.”
Cartoon by Keith Knight
They handed the clavichord, which nonetheless had ink stains on it, presumably from late nights on the keyboard. Neither actor has had a lot musical expertise. Bettany, as a London teen, used to busk by Westminster Pier. “You’d get very adept at profiling individuals,” he mentioned. “Oh, they’re French. I’m going to play the Treatment! As a result of the Treatment was large in France.”
Sharpe, additionally a local Londoner, was in a storage band along with his brother, initially referred to as Phosphene—the time period for sparks of sunshine you see together with your eyes closed. (“Terrible title,” Sharpe admitted.) For “Amadeus,” the actors practiced piano for months earlier than filming, in Hungary. “Then, after we obtained to Budapest, we have been enjoying on fortepianos, the place the keys are fairly a bit smaller, so abruptly it obtained doubly tough once more,” Sharpe recalled, eying Mozart’s keys.
Viewing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, from 1785, McClellan mentioned, “I’ll simply point out my quibble together with your collection, for what it’s price: the manuscripts didn’t appear like the precise manuscripts.” He turned sheepish. “I’m not attempting to be a jerk.”
“To make clear, Will and I didn’t make them,” Bettany mentioned.
They reached a tiny, oval-shaped engraving of Salieri. Lastly! “So, you couldn’t discover a smaller one?” Bettany mentioned. He was feeling defensive. Salieri’s personal Requiem was “fairly good,” he famous. “He was additionally a mensch. He actually supported younger musicians.”
“I confess to a slight Mozart bias within the alternative of supplies within the present,” McClellan provided. Previous Mozart’s pockets and strolling stick, they arrived at a show addressing the Salieri fable. There was an illustrated version of Alexander Pushkin’s 1830 play “Mozart and Salieri”; the rating of a Rimsky-Korsakov opera primarily based on it; and an “Amadeus” poster signed by F. Murray Abraham, who performed Salieri within the movie. “We had him right here for a personal occasion, and he made certain to let everybody know that he didn’t kill Mozart,” McClellan mentioned.
“What makes Salieri a fantastic antagonist is that he’s eminently relatable,” Bettany mentioned. “There are few geniuses, however there’s lots of mediocrity round. Each workplace on the planet has a Salieri.”
“We must always have an exhibition celebrating mediocrity in all its guises,” McClellan proposed.
Bettany grinned: “I’ll host it!” ♦
